When the president of the United States, Donald Trump, began talking about the annexation of Canada to make him state 51, people in Castine, Maine, realized.
After all, the city was occupied twice by Great Britain two centuries ago.
The British wanted to forge a new colony that would be part of British North America, in effect doing the opposite of what Trump has been reflecting.
“When I make visits on foot, I say joke to people that this could have been Canada very easily,” said Lisa Lutts, recently retired executive director of Castine’s historical society.
“If the war of 1812, if the Treaty of Paris had been different, this would have been Canada. And always joke and say, well, I would have had better medical attention. That is my joke, and people love it.”
Castine’s history is visible in the markers and historical remains of the strong British who splashed their small grid of streets overlooking Penobscot.
Kamala Harris beat Donald Trump here for 47 percentage points in the presidential elections last fall, and the president’s aggressive comments on Canada were deeply unpopular in Castine and the nearby coastal communities.
“This is not how you treat your allies,” said Pete O’Brien, a nearby rockland resident who showed Fort George’s land movements to California, built by British troops in 1779.
“We are as close as you get political, culturally, geographically.”
Liam Riordan, historian of the University of Maine in Orono and an expert in the revolutionary period, said that Trump’s rhetoric represents “a lack of understanding of nearby ties and the nearby relationships we share.”
“I think in Maine, the reaction to that has really been one of being horrified and ashamed.”
The British occupied East Maine twice. Americans living there have thoughts about the annexation talk of US President Donald Trump.
Castine’s high geographical location at the tip of a peninsula on the east side of Penobscot Bay made it a strategic location for the colonial powers fighting for North America.
A newspaper correspondent referred to its capture in 1814 as “perhaps one of the most admirable military positions in the world.”
In the seventeenth century, the current Castine was the western edge of the French colony of Acadia, with the Massachusetts Bay colony, controlled by the British, on the other side of the Bay.
France resigned from its territory in North America in 1763, but when it supported the rebels in the American revolution, the British seized Castine in case the French decided to withdraw it.
A revolutionary fleet navigated Castine to expel the British but failed miserably.
“Many Americans have no idea of the Penobscot expedition and the battle that took place here, because we lost,” Lutts said. “We remember those we won.”
When the revolution ended and the British recognized the independence of the United States, “any reasonable person during the treaty negotiations … I would have almost certain that the Penobscot river would be the border,” said Riordan.
But John Adams, one of the negotiators, pressed so that the St. Croix River was the border because he recognized how Castine would give Americans better access to lucrative stocks of fish and commercial routes.
Four hundred loyal that had come to Castine during the revolution to remain under the British crown moved again, this time solving what would become Saint Andrews, Nb
Several even moved their houses there in boats and placed them in a street grid similar to Castine’s, the reason why the two cities resemble each other.
Three decades later, during the war of 1812, the British again captured Castine again.
The story tells that the US troops in Fort Madison knew they were overcome in number, fired a surface cannon for the good of honor and quickly fled.
A local shepherd, William Mason, grabbed a white tablecloth from his dining room and went to the port to shake him as a surrender signal.
Castine was a Boomtown under British occupation thanks to trade with other British ports such as Halifax and Saint John.
“Businesses are fast and speculators are arriving daily from each quarter,” said Hartford Courant in November 1814. “War, or rather peace, with the British is becoming very popular here.”
But the treaty that ended the war of 1812 returned to Castine to the United States again.
Thousands of pounds collected by the British Customs House in Castine remained with the British and was used by the governor of Nueva Scotia, Lord Dalhousie, to establish a university that later became the University of Dalhouse.
“Another reason why we feel very close to Canada is that our money is there at that university,” Lutts joked.
“However, they don’t let us enter for free. They should let the castingers enter for free, don’t you think?”
The end of that war also marked the end of Castine Changing Hands, but the history of the city remains a touchstone for residents until today.
“We understand each other when thinking about our relationship with the past,” Riordan said. “And Castine really leans in this more than in many other local cities.”
Some local residents are not sure that life is so different here if the story had taken a different turn.
“If the Canadian border had been here, I don’t think I had changed much, because when I look at Maine, I see ourselves as a border between Canada and the United States anyway,” O’Brien said.
“I think there is also a lot of understanding and acceptance and appreciation of Canadians here too.
